Over the past several years, the education debate in America has increasingly become a conversation about technology. As we've seen the benefit of having tablets and smartphones in our lives, we've started to pin to it our hopes for our nation's education system, as well. Recently this talk has reached something close to a fever pitch. In January, Apple announced that it would be working with major education companies (including McGraw-Hill) to develop academic titles specifically for the iPad, inspiring a wave of blog posts and tweets hopeful for education's rescue. The FCC took things one step further in March, convening a meeting in Washington with several key players with the goal of driving adoptions of digital textbooks in K-12 schools across the country.

Here it comes again. On May 3, the nation will once again be subjected to the annual fiasco wherein conservative Christians utilize the apparatus of government to publicly exalt their theological beliefs, to ensure that their vociferous anti-secular views are promoted as official state doctrine. I refer, of course, to the religious pandering known as the National Day of Prayer.

As a humanist, I would not bat an eye if the nation's churches privately banded together to promote a non-governmental National Day of Prayer. If the country's evangelical leaders, Catholic bishops, and other clerics - without using the machinery of government - felt that a nationwide interfaith event encouraging prayer would be somehow beneficial, they would have my very secular blessing. Enjoy your day of prayer, folks. Knock yourselves out.

There is much handwringing about low educational attainment in the United States these days. We hear constantly about U.S. rankings on assessments like the international PISA tests: The United States was 14th in reading, 21st in science, 25th in math in 2009, for example. We hear about how young children in high-poverty areas are entering kindergarten unprepared and far behind many of their classmates. Middle school students from low-income families are scoring, on average, far below the proficient levels that would enable them to graduate high school, go to college, and get good jobs. Fewer than half of high school students manage to graduate from some urban schools. And too many poor and minority students who do go on to college require substantial remediation and drop out before gaining a degree.

"Educate to Innovate," President Obama's campaign for excellence in science, technology, engineering & math, is a call to action that our education system embrace a specific type of orientation. Innovation requires educators to think about a 21st century education incorporating both critical and creative thinking beginning with the earliest years of a student's education. And why is this focus so important? Welcome to the 21st century world of disruptive innovation.

Disruptive innovation definition: A disruptive innovation is an innovation that helps create a new market and value network, and eventually goes on to disrupt an existing market and value network (over a few years or decades), displacing an earlier technology.

Hundreds of atheists, freethinkers and other nonbelievers from around the Midwest will gather in Madison, Wis., this weekend for a conference marking the launch of a new umbrella group aimed at pulling together many of the area's so-called "Nones."

Not nuns, the Nones - that growing legion of Americans who answer "none" in surveys that track religious affiliation.

My erstwhile travelling companion Nick Minchin argues the view in Fairfax Media today that while we can all agree on clean energy, debate on the science of climate change should continue.

He states that "neither Anna, nor those whom Anna took me to meet, could convince me that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are driving dangerous global warming".

With due respect to Nick, this refusal to change his mind wasn't for lack of trying – or for lack of evidence. There are two pieces of clear, empirical evidence showing that human emissions of carbon pollution are responsible for the 40 per cent increase in CO2 since pre-industrial levels.

It is estimated that a child dies of a vaccine-preventable disease every 20 seconds. To counter this grim trend, the World Health Organization and its public and private partners are raising awareness of the critical importance of vaccines, and intensifying global vaccination campaigns during World Immunization Week from April 21- 28.

Haiti, Nigeria, Ghana -- 180 countries in all -- stepped up their immunization drives against deadly childhood infections to mark World Immunization Week.

The GAVI Alliance -- a Geneva based public-private partnership aimed at improving health in poor countries -- rolled out new vaccination campaigns in many countries against killer childhood infections such as diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, measles, mumps and rubella.

Deliberate analytical thinking can cause people to believe less in God, according to a new study.

The researchers, who found that religious belief arises from gut feelings, were quick to say their study was not a referendum on the value of religion. Both analytical thinking and the intuitive processing that seems to promote religious beliefs are important, said study researcher Will Gervais.

Should those suffering from incurable diseases have the right to assisted suicide? At the moment this issue varies from country to country, and some have yet to decide. Should you have the right to die with dignity?

Euronews’ Alex Taylor speaks to Doctor Bernard Devalois, Head of the Palliative Care Unit at the Hospital of Pontoise in France, putting forward your questions on I-talk.